My Best Friend's Wedding
1997 · 105 min.
Review
Machine-translated from Danish.
In My Best Friend's Wedding, the food writer Julianne Potter gets a nasty shock when she learns that her best friend and old flame, the sports journalist Michael, is getting married. Suddenly Julianne realises that it is actually Michael she loves and has always loved, even though it was she - and not Michael - who ended the relationship back then.
Julianne immediately travels to Chicago, where the wedding is to take place between Michael and Kimmy Wallace, a very young and good-natured rich girl who will follow Michael in everything. Julianne puts a brave face on things while using underhand means to try to put Kimmy in a bad light. She very nearly succeeds, but Julianne does an about-turn when she realises that it is, after all, Kimmy whom Michael wants. Then she goes all out to repair the damage again.
The ending can never be anything but not entirely satisfying. Fortunately the film opts for the best solution: Michael gets his Kimmy, for although it is hard not to identify with the protagonist Julianne, she simply does not deserve him, so unpleasantly does she behave.
My Best Friend's Wedding has good entertainment value. The women fill their roles well, Rupert Everett is wonderful as Julianne's gay friend George, while Dermot Mulroney has about as much charm as a wet dishcloth. Unfortunately the film has one big flaw. It is alarmingly regressive in its depiction of Kimmy and Michael's relationship. It emerges in an unpleasant restaurant scene that the girl would rather finish her university studies and stay in Chicago, but Michael cannot tolerate that at all. His career as a travelling journalist comes first, but she will surely make a happy housewife.
The director P. J. Hogan, who made the charming and quirky "Muriel's Wedding", has become part of the Hollywood machine, but in a few sequences he shows his individual talent. This applies, among other things, to the opening credits, in which a bride-to-be and her bridesmaids advertise married life with a languishing ballad against a pink background.
